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I'm back home from Iceland and it was even more amazing than I had ever dared to imagine! I had heard beforehand that Iceland's landscape is incredibly diverse and breathtakingly beautiful but wow! It is even more stunning than I thought! The beauty and diversity of the entire country just absolutely blew my mind! Exclamation marks needed!

During the trip, we spent a lot of time driving around in our rental car, exploring the island and discovering new things behind every bend. We could literally have stopped every few 100 metres to take pictures of the Icelandic roads and ever-changing landscapes, and I took so many while Philipp took his turn driving, I could probably fill a whole book with them!

I've just never been to a place this mesmerizing before. Fire and ice. Sun and storm. Blue and grey and green and red and white and black and brown and purple. Parts of the country are very moutainous, others quite flat. There's sleeping volcanoes and stony craters and bubbling hot springs. Massive glaciers and small drifting icebergs and remains of a snowy winter. Roaring waterfalls, deep fjords and shallow rivers. Colorful lava fields, green fields of moss-covered stones and grassy fields with hundreds of sheep. Rock formations and coastal cliffs. Canyons and fissures. Black sand beaches and beaches with golden sand. Lakes and hills. Small forests. Lupines. I can't even name it all, and I don't actually think my pictures do it any justice.

On June 11, 2016, I published this blogpost sharing photos of grass that I captured on one of the many walks I used to take in a nearby park. Back then, all those different shades of green seemed weirdly fascinating to me. Mesmerizing how multifarious this world is, I thought. And odd, how something so complex can be generalized so much. Green. All of these shades are referred to as green. But there are millions of them and they are all incredibly different.

Today, exactly one year later, those tones of green found in nature are still fascinating to me. If I were to describe something as green, a box for example, I'm pretty sure no two people would picture the box to be the same shade of green. Although they know what the color green looks like, everybody has their own imagination and everybody's green is slightly different. Therefore I dare say, everybody's truth is slightly different. Oh, this is getting way too philosophical. I should not be writing deep and meaningful but also kind of pointless blogposts at 10:30 pm.

By the way, Greenery is actually Pantone's color of the year, which I didn't realize until like, half an hour ago.

Since I'm currently in Iceland and (hopefully) enjoying my long-awaited road trip around the country, I thought I'd share some of my experience planning this adventure and saving up for the whole thing. As you may or may not know, Iceland isn't necessarily considered a budget destination. I obviously knew what I was getting myself into, booking flights and accommodations and a rental car for this 18 days long trip, however I don't have a ton of income and I have bills and rent to pay, so I had to do my research and plan ahead to be able to afford all of this. And here's how I did it:

I SET MY GOAL

I know it sounds quite obvious but having a goal in mind and knowing exactly what I'm saving up for makes it a lot easier for me not to spend my money. I don't usually spend a lot of money anyway and I constantly try to set aside some of it but knowing that I need x amount to be able to afford visiting Iceland really kept me from buying unnecessary stuff.

I KEPT TRACK OF MY MONEY
If I do spend money, I like to keep good track of where it is going. I regularly check my bank account and make sure I know exactly what I'm spending my money on. I'd say during the last couple of months, food was probably the only unnecessary thing I bought. (Which doesn't even really count because I do need to buy food anyway but what I mean by that is, I ate out a bit more than I'd liked to.)

I DID A LOT OF RESEARCH

Especially when it comes to travels, doing research and planning in advance can save a lot of money. Prices of flights and hotels for example can vary depending on the season, the day or the time of travel, which is something that should be kept in mind when planning a vacation. Before booking this trip, we (as in Philipp and me) spent a couple of weeks researching. We knew we didn't want to fly out during the summer holidays or in the middle of high season and took our time finding the right flights for us. We soon learned that the airline that seemed cheapest at first turned out to be much more expensive due to all the additional fees they charge for checked luggage and even hand luggage.

I WISH I BOOKED FAR IN ADVANCE
I'm not someone to plan my vacation one year ahead of time but when I was booking our accomodations for Iceland, I realized that I should have booked earlier. We started planning at the beginnning of the year and ended up booking everything in February (so approximately 4 months in advance) and when I was looking for apartments and rooms on Airbnb, most of the inexpensive ones were already fully booked. Same with the rental car. We spent too much time trying to decide whether or not we should get a 4x4 and by the time we had finally chosen a car, prices had gone up quite a bit. So next time I'm going on a longer trip, I'm definitely going to start booking hotels and whatnot as soon as I've settled on the destination to save myself a lot of stress and money.

I COOK MYSELF
Speaking of accomodations and Airbnb, I usually like to book places that have a kitchen so I can cook myself. Eating breakfast, lunch and dinner in restaurants can be quite pricey and really add up, especially when you're travelling for a longer period of time. Since Iceland is an island and many goods and foods have to be imported, things usually are a lot more expensive than in Central Europe, for instance. Of course this includes food that can be bought in supermarkets as well, but buying it there and cooking in an Airbnb still is a lot cheaper than eating out.

I TRY TO AVOID TOURIST MAGNETS
Last but not least, one thing I've kind of always done, consciously or unconscioulsy, is trying to avoid tourist mangets. I know it does sound kind of silly because when I travel somewhere, I obviously want to see the main sights. What I mean by it is, I don't necessarily feel the need to visit tourist attractions that have to be paid for. For example, I've been to London three times but I still haven't been inside the Palace of Westminster or the Tower of London and as of right now, I have no desire to see these places (from the inside). As for Iceland, nature is the country's main attraction and geysers and waterfalls and beaches and many other sights are free to visit. The only main thing (apart from glacier tours and stuff like that) that actually isn't free is the Blue Lagoon. And since I'm quite stingy, I've decided I don't want to spend a small fortune to be able to bathe in a mud pool with hundreds of other people. Sorry not sorry. I'm prioritizing and I'd much rather visit numerous of the less crowded and less expensive geothermal pools that can be found all over the country. I don't actually care if I'm missing out on anything or not.

(Since I'm writing this in advance and I haven't actually been to Iceland yet, I'm sure I'll learn a lot more about the country and gain some more experience while I'm there. I will try to write about the trip itself as soon as I'm back home, so make sure you come back if you want to read more about Iceland.)